the same time said, with explosive violence, "Wooosh! Yes. You have! The
way you put away that Latin at Wimblehurst; I've never forgotten it.

"Wo-oo-oo-osh! Your science and all that! Wo-oo-oo-osh! I know my
limitations. There's things I can do, and" (he spoke in a whisper, as
though this was the first hint of his life's secret) "there's things I
can't. Well, I can create this business, but I can't make it go. I'm too
voluminous--I'm a boiler-over, not a simmering stick-at-it. You keep on
HOTTING UP AND HOTTING UP. Papin's digester. That's you, steady and
long and piling up,--then, wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. Come in and stiffen these
niggers. Teach them that wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. There you are! That's what I'm
after. You! Nobody else believes you're more than a boy. Come right in
with me and be a man. Eh, George? Think of the fun of it--a thing on
the go--a Real Live Thing! Wooshing it up! Making it buzz and spin!
Whoo-oo-oo."--He made alluring expanding circles in the air with his
hand. "Eh?"

His proposal, sinking to confidential undertones again, took more
definite shape. I was to give all my time and energy to developing and
organising. "You shan't write a single advertisement, or give a single
assurance" he declared. "I can do all that." And the telegram was no
flourish; I was to have three hundred a year. Three hundred a year.
("That's nothing," said my uncle, "the thing to freeze on to, when the
time comes, is your tenth of the vendor's share.")

Three hundred a year certain, anyhow! It was an enormous income to me.
For a moment I was altogether staggered. Could there be that much money
in the whole concern? I looked about me at the sumptuous furniture of
Schafer's Hotel. No doubt there were many such incomes.